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But Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi has been an important voice from within the Narendra Modi government to caution Jaitley about the social and political fallout by reducing the government’s spending on social welfare.
In two letters, dated March 5 and April 27, Gandhi flagged the problems that could result because of the slashing of the welfare allocations.
In her April letter, Gandhi stated that her ministry addressed the needs of two critical constituencies - women and children. "These are important from social and political point of view. The (budget) reduction has sent wrong signals," she stated, pointing out a shortfall of Rs 10,900 crore for the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) that caters to the nutritional needs of nearly 10 crore women and children. Overall, Gandhi mentioned an additional requirement of over Rs 13,000 crore for her ministry.
"I have been informally told that if the central government share becomes much less than that of the state government, states would prefer to re-design schemes on their own," Gandhi said. She said this might "result in a situation where the focus is lost on critical programmes related to malnutrition of children, protection of children and supplementary nutrition for pregnant and lactating mothers."
The MP from Pilibhit said: "I am afraid to point out that political fallout of such a situation can be grave."
In her letter on March 5, Gandhi attempted to explain to the finance minister the importance of the social welfare programmes that her ministry runs for women and children. She said her ministry came up with a new National Nutritional Mission (NNM) programme and presented it to the Prime Minister in December 2014. The scheme required Rs 28,000 crore over five years but only Rs 100 crore were provided in the budget, she said.
